Also please do not identify me as an IDist. Most of the Idists that I know want nothing to do with me nor I with them. When their high priest, William Dembski, banned me from his forum he lost a valuable ally and I see no sign that my one time friend DaveScot is about to reinstate me. Egos are terrible things. Dembski has a huge one. So do many others who have identified themselvs with the so called “Intelligent Design Movement.” You are a notable exception. I suspect it has to do with your sincere Christianity.

As someone who has designed a lot of software, I have to disagree with that.

The hallmark of good design is often simplicity, however the only hallmark that really applies for design is - does the designed object actually do what it's designed to do, and do it efficiently enough to be useful.

The simplest design is not always the best design. All good designs involve a compromise between the ideal (simplicity) and the pragmatic (reality).

ID is neither theory nor hypothesis. It's therefore not scientific - science only includes conjectures, hypotheses, theories, and laws. It's not the first, and it can't be the last, and if it's not the middle two... well, it isn't at all.

There's a lot of gnashing of teeth going on over at Uncommon Descent. Read this line of comments and tell me if they look like a happy bunch:

I think people here have a lot more fun than at UD.

Oh, well, except for the fact that the people at UD are all going to heaven...

I see some previously banned people at UD are back; is DaveSpringer relaxing his policies? Bad publicity and all?

--------------"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

The hallmark of good design is often simplicity, however the only hallmark that really applies for design is - does the designed object actually do what it's designed to do, and do it efficiently enough to be useful.

The hallmark of intelligent design is simplicity. Let me give you an example that is software related.

Most modern processors can either have code written for them directly in assembly, or they have software that will convert a higher level code into assembly. If I gave you two pieces of assembly software, and you took the time to read through the assembly software(which would be annoying), how would you determine which one had been written by software(compliled from a higher level language) and which one had been written by hand?

Normally you would assume that the code that had the most unneccesary steps had been created via software, while the "simpler" code had been written directly.

Organisms are designed...that is a given. The question is...were they designed by a process or by an entity. This is why the problem of the flawed designer is much more serious than the problem of necessary evil. The more flawed the designing agent is, the less intelligent the agent.

Evolution already posits a designer....just an unintelligent designer....IDers need to prove the intelligence of their designer. I am sure everyone here would agree that a "designer" exists(i.e. natural selection)

All IDers keep doing is trying to prove a designer....they ignore the word intelligence. Intelligent beings do make mistakes, but they should make considerably less mistakes than an automated process....and if they do make more mistakes than the automated process....they should use the automated process

I'll start with the scurrilous bit of personal info (whether factual or fictitious - I really don't care) - totally unrelated to the whole ID/evo thing - that DS posted about someone he had just banned.

This from the man who just today insinuated that a man who disagreed with him was suffering from AIDS-related dementia?

He seems to want the rest of the world to hold to a set of standards from which he is magically exempted...

--------------"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

Mark Perakh is a crazy Russian physicist known to say all sorts of crazy things. Russians are notoriously paranoid conspiracy theorists and bald faced liars.

I'm not sure about the alcoholic part - perhaps you're thinking of when Fearless Leader himself inexplicably called Perakh the The Boris Yeltsin of Higher Education. That left a lot of us wondering what it was supposed to mean, but figured it had something to do with Yeltsin's alleged drinking problem.

The hallmark of good design is often simplicity, however the only hallmark that really applies for design is - does the designed object actually do what it's designed to do, and do it efficiently enough to be useful.

The hallmark of intelligent design is simplicity. Let me give you an example that is software related.

Most modern processors can either have code written for them directly in assembly, or they have software that will convert a higher level code into assembly. If I gave you two pieces of assembly software, and you took the time to read through the assembly software(which would be annoying), how would you determine which one had been written by software(compliled from a higher level language) and which one had been written by hand?

Normally you would assume that the code that had the most unneccesary steps had been created via software, while the "simpler" code had been written directly.

Organisms are designed...that is a given. The question is...were they designed by a process or by an entity. This is why the problem of the flawed designer is much more serious than the problem of necessary evil. The more flawed the designing agent is, the less intelligent the agent.

Evolution already posits a designer....just an unintelligent designer....IDers need to prove the intelligence of their designer. I am sure everyone here would agree that a "designer" exists(i.e. natural selection)

All IDers keep doing is trying to prove a designer....they ignore the word intelligence. Intelligent beings do make mistakes, but they should make considerably less mistakes than an automated process....and if they do make more mistakes than the automated process....they should use the automated process

If the hallmark of design is simplicity then how come in my career in software I've come across people who design and program in unnecessarily complex ways?

And the ones cheering about courts censoring it on establishment clause grounds are downright despicable. These are no scientists but rather people with an anti-religion agenda who won’t let facts get in the way of their agenda.

DaveScott is right. You really should attack the ideas and not the despicable, fact-resistant, agenda-pushing, fake scientists that hold them

Programmers get paid all sorts of different ways. I think the paid-per-line was a thing IBM did for a while. It didn't work well, but coming up with a metric for judging the performance of a programmer is hard. Hey, maybe this is somewhere else Intelligent Design could contribute. They could make a software package that analyses the amount of "CSI" in the code. Then the programmer could be paid based on how much CSI he added.

Man, talk about your dishonesty. A Harris poll here ( http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=581 ) finds that educated people are far less likely to doubt evolution than uneducated people. 73% of people with High School or less support creationism, 6% support ID, and 17% support evolution. By the time you get to postgrad degrees, evolution support has jumped to 35%, creationism has fallen to 42, and 17% say they support ID. How does DaveScot spin this?

You know...I originally started posting on UD to test something. In my rather short life experience, I have found that many people hold beliefs without any reason. I thought that this might be the case with a lot of the Intelligent Design crowd. When i first learned the "true" definition of ID I was appalled. I got the impression that most people who supported ID were either creationists who knew what they were doing, or completely ignorant.

Then I met DaveScot. I dont particularly enjoy DaveScot, but I think we can all agree that he isnt a complete fool. DaveScot is not a creationist. Im rather sure of this fact: either DaveScot honestly is not a Creationist, or he ignores the 10 commandments. He also is not ignorant, he actually understands ID, and still apparently supports ID.

This man has bothered me for quite some time. Every other person I have ever met holds ID beliefs because of either religion or ignorance....and I dont believe DaveScot honestly falls into either category. I suggest that people like DaveScot are the reason for ID succeeding at all.

The loch ness monster does not exist...despite the beliefs of many people. Many, many people ignorantly see the loch ness monster....they are either completely unfamiliar with water or marine life or both. Many people see the loch ness monster because of some confirmation bias, they believe there to be a monster so they see one. Most people probably fall under both categories. A very few people who are familiar with the loch and who have no previous belief in the monster see something they cannot explain and contribute it to the loch ness monster. If no one else had seen a monster...then these people might easily find a more rational explanation for what they had just seen. They really cannot be blamed, the are reliable witnesses, but thanks to the support of every other "Nessie" sighting they decide that they saw a "monster".

DaveScot might legitimately believe in ID in all of its glory without any religious context, but he only believes in it because of all of the other supporters who do have religious motives. They, however, can point to people like him. They can say "look, he is a smart guy who understands all of this and who has no religious motivation". It seems to be a cycle of support. Just like UFOs and the loch ness monster. Only a few people have any real reason to say anything, but their opinion is jaded because of the thousands of less scrupulous supporters. The less scrupulous supporters look to the "authentic" believers for their support.

At least....that's DaveScot in my lil nutshell. Maybe someday he will become more of a skeptic and seek more rational solutions for his problems, but right now the ID/creationist movement has a guy on their side who they can hold up as a posterboy....despite the fact that he represents only a very, very, very slim minority of ID believers

Maybe someday he will become more of a skeptic and seek more rational solutions for his problems, but right now the ID/creationist movement has a guy on their side who they can hold up as a posterboy....despite the fact that he represents only a very, very, very slim minority of ID believers.

Dave doesn't usually own up to his mistakes, but he does surreptitiously change his opinions in response to countervailing evidence. Witness his conversion over the last month from agnostic to believer on the common descent issue. It wouldn't surprise me to see him become a neo-Darwinian as more evidence comes to light.

As for Dave being a "posterboy" for the ID movement, forget about it. He's not smart enough, and any intelligence he does display is overshadowed by his infantile demeanor.

David Berlinski is ID's real agnostic posterboy. He's a lot smarter than Dave, has credentials, and is much less obnoxious. He also writes better (if a bit floridly).

What they have in common is a desire to see themselves as principled intellectual loners who have followed the evidence into the wilderness while the scientific establishment remains sheep-like in well-worn pastures.

--------------And the set of natural numbers is also the set that starts at 0 and goes to the largest number. -- Joe G